Close The X-Files

And that’s okay because it’s the fear of death, of Thanatos, that drives all animals, of which we are, to procreate (so that our genes–and what are we if not the genetic material that literally makes us up–live on in our children).

Immortality of a sort.

What does the above idea have to do with The X-Files, a series that aired from 1993 to 2002 on Fox, and spawned two movies, The X-Files: Fight the Future in 1998 and The X-Files: I Want to Believe in 2008?

And I wish they’d just stop. The original series started promisingly, with two FBI agents working to uncover secrets that our government denied ever existed, with an emphasis on UFO mythology, combined with stand-alone stories that existed outside the aforementioned overarching mythos.

And that was good, till it became so entangled in that ungainly mythology that it literally collapsed under it (and I’m not being hyperbolic. The series literally became incomprehensible and nonsensical, sometime with job a single episode).

If it had just gone away longer it would acted as a breather, a palate cleanser, to remove the bitter, ash-like taste of a show that just. Refuses. To. Die.

And maybe David Ducovny and Jillian Anderson would be unable (or unwilling) to return.

If so then just recast, creating a world that would be both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time to those who remembered the original series with fondness.

As it stands, these X-Files event series remind me less of the original show than The Walkind Dead, which is the true face of immortality.